Week One

While I've been subjecting you to the Alex and Stimey Follies, it's possible you've been wondering how the munchkins are doing at school. It's possible that you're wondering why I haven't mentioned them in days.

Mayhap you've thought to yourself, "Is this IT? Those adorable children all go to school and now I have to listen to this woman yap on and on about all the non-cute things that happen to her and her husband because she doesn't have any awesome kiddie subject matter any more?"

The answer to that is yes. Yes, you do.

But I'll throw you a bone now and again. A small, cute, munchkin-sized rib bone, perhaps. (Aside: The other day, Quinn, who loves ribs, asked if we had to kill people to get the ribs to cook. After we assured him that no, we don't eat people, it occurred to me that the notion of cannibalism certainly hadn't stopped him from eating all the ribs he could find.)

Anyway. How is school going for the wee ones?

Contrary to what you would expect, Sam seems to be having the hardest time adjusting to school. Not in a stressed out, doesn't want to go to school kind of way, but in an exploding when he gets home sort of way.

He's always kind of been like that. He likes to do everything exactly right, so the stress and anxiety of being good and being on his game all day breaks down the second he gets off the bus. Which, you know, great that I'm his safe place and all, but holy crow, I'm tired of being yelled at.

I'm actively seeking ways to help Sam deal with his emotions. Yoga? Meditation? Child psychologist?

On to Jack. Now, I know I'm jinxing everything by saying this, but Jack is a motherfucking rock star. Everyday he gets off the bus and I ask him how school was, and he says, "Awesome." The school hasn't called me once, Jack seems to really like his teacher, and the stumbles that get written about in his communication notebook are getting handled well.

The only problem is that his bus is still really late. Today it arrived nine minutes before school starts and I just about broke my leg doing a happy dance. That is much improved from pick-ups five minutes after school starts (Tuesday and Wednesday) or two minutes before the bell rings (yesterday). I'd call the transportation people, but that would mean I would have to dig his route information out of the pile of crap sitting by my desk.

Oh, and homework? We've only had two nights of (easy) homework thus far, but I seem to have hit on a plan that is working. I set my iPhone timer for 15 minutes (or whatever) and if he finishes before the alarm goes off, he gets to play games on the phone for 15 minutes, plus whatever amount of time is left on the timer. He's been kicking butt. Plus, he had to fill a "personality bag" with five things that show who he is and he actually really participated and thought about it instead of letting me lead.

Really, it's super awesome, but I'm terrified that I'll go soft and happy and then get hit with the be-all end-all death blow of bad behavior or something. So when you speak kindly of Jack's school experience, do so quietly and with stealth.

As for Quinn? Well he is doing great. Evidently his teacher did a magic trick with a goldfish cracker yesterday and Quinn thinks he is a superhero now. He was all emphatic and "My teacher is the best teacher in the whole world!"

That sounded a little bit unlike something Quinn would say, so we asked if his teacher had told him that. Quinn thought for a minute and said, "Hmmmm...Maybe the first day."

Trick to making your young, impressionable kindergarteners think you're awesome? Tell them you're awesome.

Quinn has been my little sidekick/barnacle for so long now, it's kind of weird not having him around all the time. Little reminders of him come up now and again: when I see a dog that Quinn would love to pet, when I see his blanket crumpled on the floor, when I'm refilling a soda cup at 7-11 and the Quinn-sock I didn't see hiding in the bottom bubbles through the ice and soda to the top of the cup.

Seriously though, he's doing great. He successfully bought lunch yesterday and whenever anyone asks him about the bus, he says that it is "SO FUN!" and, yes, those capital letters are there in his words.

Sadly, the bus stop has turned into a scene from a HUAC investigation. The transportation people are cracking down on kids who are technically in the "walk zone" but who take the bus at our bus stop. This guy showed up yesterday with a stern warning and this morning he was there with his florescent vest, his blacklist, his addresses, and his "Do you now or have you ever lived on the other side of that street?"

There was some naming of names. It was kind of horrible. I feel bad for all the kids who are going to have to walk a MILE to school every day because they live 0.15 miles away from me. I'm also waiting for the time when budgets get cut even more and I will have to walk 1.15 miles to school.

Anywho.

The dog is also unduly upset about the whole situation. I am the dog's person and she is always in the same room as me. However, now that all the children are out of the house, she spends school hours forlornly sitting all alone in the living room near the front door. It's a little sad.

There you have it in a nutshell. Week One has been good. I am fairly certain that seconds after clicking "Publish Post" that my phone will ring with a terrible call from the school, but so far so good, no news is good news, knock on wood, and any other happy cliche you can think of.

It's Quite Possible I'm High Right Now

I'm crabby. You wanna know why I'm crabby? Because this morning, when Alex noticed gas dripping out of his motorcycle's fuel line and then poked at it, causing the thing to disintegrate, resulting in our frantic running around for buckets and whatnot, only to succeed in finding them mere instants before the gas tank ran dry, well, that was not an awesome way to start my day.

Also? All the stink molecules and fumes from the spill seem to have migrated directly INTO my house, leaving the garage smelling all sweet and cat litter-y (which I poured on the spill), but the house still smells like a gas station.

I have a headache and am possibly quite high on the fumes—and not in a fun "it's hard to lean against this wall when it's hugging me back" kind of way, but rather in a toxic "I'm gonna go lie down and maybe never get up again" kind of way.

I've combed the area to see if anyone accidentally brought something gas soaked inside, but there is nothing. I don't think it's me because when I leave the house and then come back inside, I am re-hit with the smell. Also I was very careful to not get gas all over me.

Alex was not quite so good with not getting gas all over him, especially due to the fact that he, unlike me, was there for the initial fuel line implosion, and it was probably highly surprising and undoubtedly splashed all over him.

By the time we stemmed the flow of gas (and by "stemmed the flow of gas," I mean, "watched helplessly as the gas all ran onto the floor of the garage"), Alex had to rush to work with no time to re-shower.

I'm pretty sure he has had an extremely unpleasant day, which is the only thing keeping me from calling him repeatedly with my own complaints. I drove him to the Metro station for his non-motorcycle commute with the windows down and air pouring into the car.

"I bet the confined space of the Metro car will be awesome," he said.

I'm just surprised he wasn't arrested on suspicion of being a bomb before he sat down. I was laughing hysterically (gas fumes?) about his potential arrest as he got out of the car with an emphatic giving of the finger.

I wonder how long it will be before his employers send him home or force him into a Silkwood-style shower.

Okay, wait. In the twenty minutes that I've been trying to find a way to end this post (definitely gas fumes), I decided to open up all the windows on the side of the house away from the garage. I feel better already.

Edited to add: Alex and I have been exchanging surly emails all morning. I just got this from him: "When I ordered the spare part to fix the bike, the lady said, 'Look on the bright side, at least you're not on fire.'" She makes an excellent point.

Geek Check

Yesterday I emailed Jack's hockey coach to find out what numbers were available to have printed on his uniform. He told me that, except for a select few, any number between 40 and 98 was fine. Here is the email exchange between Alex and I that ensued after that exciting news:

Me: "Do you know why I'm excited? Jack's number for hockey is going to be 42."

Alex: "??"

Me: "It's the answer. Life? The Universe? Everything? Seriously. It's like you're not even a nerd anymore."

Alex: "?? ---- ??"

Me: "It's like I don't even know you anymore." And I included this link.

Alex: "magic cube"

Me: "What the hell is a magic cube? What? Who? I thought we were soul mates. 42 means one thing. I can't believe you don't get that. It's over. I'm out."

Alex: "I know about the Hitchhiker's Guide, man. I'm not stupid. But who doesn't know that 42 can be expressed as a magic cube. You, man..."

Me: "Why do you try to hurt me? And seriously. A magic cube? I think you just made that up right now."

Then I did some thinking and sent another email: "Oh. Wait. Is it some kind of math thing? I was picturing, like, a Rubik's Cube."

Alex: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_cube Hah!"

Me: "Dude. I am sorry, but I can't even READ that. Not to mention, I didn't see the number 42 anywhere."

It's true. That Wikipedia page was entirely incomprehensible to me. I continued to send some obnoxious emails to Alex along the lines of "Yeah. That's what I thought. You got nuthin'," to which I received no response. I take that to mean that I totally won our exchange. Alex seems to think that his lack of a response meant that he had to return to his actual, paying job.

In summary:
Stimey = geek
Alex = super geek

Day One

Back to school went well today. I'll just put that out there so you know that all the worry and stress I had about this day was for naught. Of course, who knows what Day Two and Three and Fifty-Six and Ninety-Eight will bring, but Day One went well and I'm happy.

I'm actually a little worried because Jodi, Mel, and I were joking on twitter about how we were going to buy a pony for our kids to share if they all made it through the first week of school and now I'm afraid that I'm actually going to have to buy half of a pony.

I already called the left half. His name is Sparkles.

But back to the first day of school. We had two minor debacles this morning.

Debacle the first is that Quinn woke up with, and I kid you not, a zit in the middle of his chin.

What? Really. What? He's five and it was his first day of kindergarten. Shouldn't the zit have waited until his first day of junior high?

I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to hear that I held him down and squeezed it. He was slightly put out, but not too upset.

He recovered and was fully dapper by bus time.

For some reason, Alex had convinced all of them to wear Cal shirts so they matched. Also, just in case Sam and Jack weren't identical enough before...

Orchestrating this photo was like herding grasshoppers.

Sam and Quinn's bus departs from the bus stop around the corner before Jack's bus picks him up at our house, so I left Jack with Alex and took the other two up to the bus stop.

He looks so little. Sam watched out for him though.

Then I headed back home to help put Jack on his bus.

See how the dog is concerned that Sam and Quinn didn't come home with me?

Of course both buses were late, it being the first day of school. Unfortunately, Jack's bus had less time padding, seeing as how he is supposed to be picked up eight minutes before school starts, which led to debacle the second.

As the school start time approached and there was still no sign of the bus, I had a little mental fight with myself about what to do—enforce the routine of the bus or get him to school so he could start in his class at the same time as the rest of the kids.

I waited until school start time and then threw Jack in the car and sped him to school, getting there fast enough that I doubt he missed anything. Fortunately, Jack is usually pretty mellow about that kind of thing. Alex stayed and talked to the bus driver who assured him that the bus will be on time tomorrow.

After I returned home, I futzed around on the computer for a while and then realized that I had no idea what to do. Eventually I decided to take a nap. I'm not going to tell you how long I slept, but suffice it to say, I am WIDE awake now.

Jack's teacher sent me an encouraging email mid-day, which was awesome, and in a subsequent email told me that she was an after-school one-to-one for a kid with autism for two years when she was getting her master's degree.

Boo. Yah.

All three kids were happy and calm when they got home and played quietly for about an hour while I waited until they were ready for me to take them out for ice cream.

I consider Day One to be kind of a honeymoon. The reality of school sets in heavier as the days carry on. Jack will inevitably have some problems—as will my other kids. I'm not going to be able to nap all of my days away, what with actual work and real life to contend with.

But Day One? It was good.

Here We Go Again: Back to School 2010

I don't know if I'm ready to dance a jig or throw up out of nervousness.

I might do both.

I have been waiting for this day for so long. Do you want to know what is on my calendar this coming week? Almost entirely big blank squares just waiting for me to fill them with the work I usually do at night after my kids go to bed. And naps. Honestly, it seems unreal.

My work load and list of things to do has been piling up faster than I can do them. I haven't had more than a couple of hours to myself during daylight time for close to nine years now. The thought of six uninterrupted hours five days in a row to do things is mind boggling to me. I almost can't wrap my mind around it.

Last spring I wrote about all the ways my life would change once my kids go to school, and I am so excited to start living that way, but first I'm going to have just a tiny little FREAK OUT because as the start of school gets closer and closer (and dear lord, it's TOMORROW by now), the more I start to worry.

You'd think I'd be worried about Quinn, the kindergartener, but I'm pretty sure he'll do fine. He knows a bunch of the kids going into kindergarten at his school and two of his good friends will be in his class. Plus he's really excited. He's watched his brothers go to elementary school for so long, I think he's really ready.

Quinn at Open House.

As for Sam, well, Sam will be fine. He has some anxiety about school, but for the most part he does great. I mean, he is going to school in a trailer (called a "portable" around these parts) instead of actually in the school building, but he'll do well.

Too cool for mom to take a photo.

Which leaves us with Jack. I'm worried about Jack. Sometimes school seems a little bit like a torture chamber for him. I've been trying to prepare him by teaching him to tell his teachers when he needs a break or if it's too noisy, but I'm not sure he'll be able to do that when he's in the middle of it.

I wrote up a Who is Jack? paper to give to his teachers and aides and maybe the lunch lady/crossing guard/random stranger in the hall if I happened to run across them, and Jack found a draft that I'd left sitting in the TV room. I found him Friday morning reading it.

Weirdly, I felt kind of caught red-handed.

"Jack, does that sound okay?" I asked, to which he responded with a thumbs up. He's never seen my little fact sheets about him before, but since one of the points on the sheet is that I am trying to teach him to advocate for himself, it seems reasonable that he read it.

Open House didn't really help with my nerves. We walked in the door and Jack started ping ponging around and humming. It was really overwhelming in a lot of ways and reminded me how hard school, with all of its stimuli, is for Jack.

His teacher was really nice and when the principal asked how I was doing and I said, "Nervous," his response was, "We'll take good care of him." And I know they will, but, oy. I'm worried.

I'll let you know tomorrow how things went. If you don't follow me on twitter yet, it might be a good time to start. I almost guarantee you that I will be swinging all over the place and spewing a lot of untethered emotions around there tomorrow.

Wish us luck. (Also, good luck to all of you. I know a bunch of you will be sending your kids in tomorrow—or already have, or will soon. My good wishes are with you as well.)

*****

I wrote a piece for Laura Shumaker's SF Gate column about this very thing. Check it out: Back to School: Autism Style.

Hotel Stimey: Spreading the Disease (Part IV)

I know, based on the sheer number of blog inches used in describing our camping adventure, that it sounds like we were in the wild for 30 days, Survivor-style. In fact, it was four (ish) days and three nights. The morning of Day Five, we packed up, showered, and headed off for adventures in cleaner, quieter living.

That is, we made hotel reservations for our last night.

Before that though, we headed out to see some friends who were staying with their kids and a parent in the Hamptons.  They had also been to the Phish show, but their experience involved swanky living and a babysitter.

I hate them.*

* Okay. Not really.

Anyway, I guess I always thought that The Hamptons was a town. Turns out that it's a bunch of towns known collectively as "The Hamptons." Hence the plural. Duh. I clued into this when we passed Westhampton then Southampton then Bridgehampton and so on.

Am not smart.

Also, I am not sophisticated or fabulous enough to be in the Hamptons. Fortunately, our friends—who are sophisticated and fabulous enough to be there—are kind enough to not point out my constant buffoonery—or, let's face it, Alex's constant buffoonery as well.

We spent several hours in the backyard swimming in the pool. This pool:

Our little inflatable backyard...thing seems less awesome now.

Our friends were celebrating their kids' birthdays, so not only did they win our kids' hearts with swimming, but also with cupcakes. Their kids, not pictured here, are super cool. Although I had forgotten how bossy three-year-olds are. Thank goodness they are also adorable.

We had the best time. It was exactly what we needed.

Best. Day. Ever.

I think we might have stayed about a half hour too long. It was just too hard to leave. Our friends live in California, so we rarely see them. The sun and the water took its toll in late day crankypants behavior, however. Plus Jack nearly drowned shortly before we left.

See, there was this awesome wearable floatie, and in retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to let him jump into the water wearing it.

Not actually a photo of the drowning incident.

His last time in the pool, Jack jumped in wearing this, flipped over, and was stuck upside down, legs sticking out of the water, head under water. It's kinda funny if it weren't scary. He lived, so you can laugh a little. But just a little.

I was actually really proud of Jack. I had my cover-up and shoes stripped off in nanoseconds and was just about to jump in to save him when I saw that he had managed to bring his head out of the water and was doggy paddling the couple of feet to the side of the pool, fighting against the floatie that was trying to push him back under. I was really impressed at how well he kept his head. The survival instincts are strong in that one.

From there, we bade our friends goodbye and headed off on our journey to the hotel, which was in some town that started with an H, but which I could not pronounce. After we got there we checked in and went across the street to eat dinner at a restaurant. We'd promised our kids that they could swim in the hotel pool, so even though Quinn wasn't feeling great after a day in the sun, we went to the pool anyway.

That may have been a mistake.

That's right.

Fortunately, we were alone in the pool when it happened and we were able to find a housekeeper right outside, so, other than her, no one ever knew it was us that did it and we were able to slink out of there with our dignity only half destroyed. It was totally dramatic.

The hotel beds were really nice though. Although I kinda got the short end of the stick—or the tiny corner of the bed. Somehow, Alex and I ended up in different beds. He slept with Sam and I slept (if, by "slept," you mean "crammed into a bed with") with Jack and Quinn.

First of all, that means I had far more people in my bed (the jump from two to three = "far more") AND one of those people really, really likes me. In the morning Alex said he woke up at one point in the middle of the night and it looked like I had a Jack-growth stuck on to me.

It's kind of a miracle I didn't fall wasn't pushed out of bed.

Regardless, morning dawned and we embarked on our last day of activities before we came home.

For realsies.

One of Alex's friends is part of the team that brings select parts of the country Sixpoint Craft Ales, so we headed into Brooklyn to check out their operation. It was actually really fun, although our kids missed the best part, which was the beer samples.

There were, however, chickens.

We were all, "Why chickens?" and Alex's friend was all, "We like eggs."

There was also a rooftop garden including hops in their natural state. I thought that was pretty cool.

Alex and his friend also forced me to eat a hot pepper that was growing up there.

As far as I know, they don't put those in the beer.

Just before touring the actual brewery, we got our delicious beer.

Seriously? It's really good. Even at 11 a.m.

Hell, especially at 11 a.m.

The brewery process was cool.

Here are Jack and Alex "listening to yeast." Don't ask me.

The munchkins were less excited about the brewery than Alex and I. According to them, it was loud and smelly.

And non-alcoholic for them.

We had planned to go on a boat tour around New York City after the brewery, but Alex's friend informed us that there was a water taxi two blocks away from Sixpoint and that it cost $5.

Let's see. It's a boat. It passes the Statue of Liberty. It goes to New York. Why the hell do we need a tour?

Here we are seeing the Statue of Liberty close up.

I swear it looked bigger from the boat.

Here is Sam eating his weight in sugar.

AND with a genuine smile. THAT is a big deal.

Plus, my little sensory kids got to experience the wind!

And no one got seasick and barfed FTW!

I was only worried a little bit that our return taxi ride would not feature all three children. After all, New York City doesn't seem too big. I'm sure kids rarely get lost there.

Spoiler alert: All three kids made it home.

We decreased our chances of losing anyone by experiencing the city just from the water taxi area. We didn't have time to do any city exploring anyway. We fed the kids NYC hot dog cart food—and I embarrassed Alex by taking a photo of Sam with the hot dog vendor. Seriously, I'm no treat to travel with if you like to maintain any modicum of cool.

 Yum. Under-overpass eating.

After buying all that overpriced food, we fed most of it to the pigeons. Remember how we're the assholes who do that? Remember that modicum of cool? Any that was left disappeared once we had attracted a flock of competing pigeons, Jack kept chasing them, and I took photos of the whole thing.

The trick is to give into the silly.

Jack is actually something of a pigeon whisperer. He lured them in really close aaaaaand then...

Also, he ate some pretzel after he dropped it on the ground.

The pigeon in question.

Shortly thereafter, we grabbed our water taxi back to Brooklyn, then fought our way through New York and New Jersey traffic to finally arrive home Friday evening.

Despite the mass twitter complaining I did—and really, I did—I had a (mostly) good time. If I'm still making jokes on twitter, it means things are still fun. You should only worry when I fall quiet. I hate to be all cheesy and loving to close out #campstimey, but my family makes pretty much anything fun. They're good people.

Part I—Camp Stimey: Stay Alive...No Matter What Occurs!
Part II—Camp Stimey: Into the Wild
Part III—Camp Stimey: When Animals Attack

Camp Stimey: When Animals Attack (Part III)

Let's see. Where did we leave off? Camping...cold, hard ground...spousal abandonment to attend a Phish concert...

Oh, right! Alex arrived home at about 1 a.m. and fell fast asleep. I spent some time stewing over the people chatting loudly the next campsite over and finally fell asleep only to be woken less than an hour later by a sound. It sounded an awful lot like someone was going through the stuff on our picnic table.

I tried to pretend that it wasn't actually happening in an effort to make it actually not happen. Maybe it was Chatty Chatterson and his Chatty-ettes at the next campground banging pots or something.

But no. Right about the time I realized that I was going to have to sit up, Alex woke up too. I grabbed a flashlight as Alex started muttering some sort of gibberish. I think it was more the loud gibberish than the flashlight that scared off the intruder, but the flashlight did illuminate the GIANT RACCOON ASS that went scampering off.

Alex was reluctant to leave the relative safety of our tent to put our food in the car. "Will the raccoon hurt me?" he asked.

Yes, Alex. The mean, mean raccoon will probably come back and jump on you a la the squirrel in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Honestly, Alex was probably pretty safe. Based on the size of his butt (the raccoon's), I don't think that raccoon would move or jump all that fast.

 I think I know why he was so fat though. Bastard opened our cooler, took out all of our chocolate, unwrapped it, and ate it right there, leaving the wrappers behind.

Why, God? WHYYYYYYY????

Needless to say, every day of camping was getting better and better.

See how happy I am?
Also, the one piece of evidence that I was actually on this trip.

We decided to head off to a local McDonald's to feed the children, what with our lack of food and chocolate due to RACCOON ATTACK 2010! We ended up loitering in the play place at that McDonald's for probably an hour and half. (Also? Free wifi.)

It was too cold to go to the beach again, so we decided to take the kids to a movie, but not before an unfortunate series of events led to this:

And we didn't remember about them for, like, an hour and a half.

That was pretty much our day. We played at the playground some more and Sam tied his brothers up with the clothesline for an hour or so. There were also airplanes of some sort, but I don't really know anything about them because I fell asleep in the car on the way home from the movie.

Look, ma! I made it myself!

Back at the campground, Alex prepared to abandon us for another Phish concert and I fed the children with a pizza we bought down the road. What? Shut up. We're not really "campers." That's why they have delis close to campsites.

Our night was pretty uneventful. I couldn't put our leftover food and stuff in the car because Alex drove it to the concert. Instead, I wrapped our leftover pizza in tin foil and stashed it in the cooler.

That was some good thinking on my part. I protected our food from the raccoons by wrapping it in something shiny and then putting it in a container I knew for a fact the raccoon was capable of breaching.

Alex put the food in the car when he got home, but it was too late. No pizza breakfast for us.

We did get these dirty little raccoon paw prints all over our stuff, though.

The next morning we woke up early and got the hell out of Dodge.

I'm not sure why he's wearing work gloves.

Tomorrow I bring you Team Stimey in the Hamptons. Surprisingly, no one made a total ass of themselves. Well, not until we left the Hamptons at least.

Part I—Camp Stimey: Stay Alive...No Matter What Occurs!
Part II—Camp Stimey: Into the Wild
Part IV—Hotel Stimey: Spreading the Disease (Coming Soon!)